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When attacking my last moulds I destroyed the blade of my plane. It was the classic knot of spruce, which are notorious for being hard enough to break tools. It is even more remarkable concidering the general softness of the timber. It is possible make marks with your fingernail as I did here:


Yet in the very same board there was this knot and the result can be seen here:


However, I was able to finish my moulds during the weekend:




I couldn´t get further back from the moulds so there are some problems to fit everything in a picture, let alone find an angle to show the lines properly.

I think this gives people a fairly good idea what she'll be shaped like. Ouch on your plane blade, some species are tougher then others. What angle is your blade initially ground at?

I didn´t check, I just left the plane disassembled and continued without it to finish the moulds.  ;D

I haven´t used the plane for a long time and it has been sharpened by my Dad with whom I share the shop. My guess would be 40-45 degrees, that is what we use normally.
But I need to check and refurbish the blade as well as the smaller #4 Record. This was the bigger #6.

Try 25 degrees to rough in and square up the blade, then hone and polish to desired sharpness at 26 or 27 degrees. Too thin a cutting edge will dent and chip easily, which is what sounds like yours has done.

Greetings Timo,

If you walk into the other room, stand next to the dust collector, turn around, and shoot a picture back through the door frame, I bet you can get all of the moulds in the same photograph. It will a little like a stack of station lines, but in 3D.

You are making fabulous progress.

Cheers,
Tom

The blade turned out to be something like 30-35 degrees judged by the eye. I roughed it to that and honed to approx 40 to 45. Everything done by the eye and accuracy of degrees accordingly  ;D But I use a jig so it is consistent. Both planes cut just fine now. The knots in spruce are hard as nails, one shouldn´t really hit them with a plane at all.

Tom, I shot one like that but didn´t like it at all. The moulds are one behind another and you can´t figure out the lines at all. I will make a version with half the real station spacing.

I think my next step will be the spars and I have a question to Paul concerning the timber to use.

I have not found any source of information where I would have comparable data about White Spruce (Picea Glauca?), Sitka SPruce (Picea Sitchensis) and Picea Abies (Norwegian Spruce?), which we call "forest spruce" as opposed to the others which are only met in parks and gardens. I Finnish literature your species are only discussed in the gardening department and ours is mentioned as an anecdote in American sources.

Do you have any source where these would be technically covered so I could make an educated decision whether my spruce would fit the bill. All I know is that it is between Sitka Spruce and Douglas Fir in weight. Larch (Larix Decidua) would be another option but it is heavier and way more expencive, although the amount needed makes the price a moot issue. Larch is harder and more rot resistant so it might be a good idea to go with it at least for the masts that receive chafe from the gaffs.

Spar building in cooler weather is an honored tradition.

One quick note, the foot taper shown on the plans for the masts could be eliminated if desired. Just make a column to the gooseneck dimension, then taper the hounds on up. I was just trying to save some weight and be traditional.

Norwegian spruce would be a fine choice, being fairly common over here. It's one of the most hybrid of the confers here, adapting well all over the northern tear of states. It ranges from about 26 to 29 pounds per cubic foot and would be a better choice then your larch.

Soften the gaff jaws with leather, HDPE or a wrapping of 12 ounce cloth (on the mast) in this area. If you made two piece masts, with the lower portions being aluminum tubing, this wouldn't be as big an issue (especially weight), though you would have to live with the clanging of halyards and lifts against the hollow metal stick. Maybe foam filled to reduce the racket.

I made some tests with the bird´s mouth method today. Spent a lot of time because I had to fix some problems with the table saw to be able to tilt it 45 degrees. It seems to be the standard routine that I need to refurbish most of the tools when starting to use them ???

Maybe I shouldn´t have let so much time pass since my previous project :  But it really is nice to get up to speed in the workshop again.

I made a short stub with the symmetrical setup and I will make the same with the assymmetrical tomorrow to see how much more setup work there is to make the staves. The symmetrical seemed to be straight forward method, took me about ten minutes to set up the saw and make a couple of meters of stave.

That is, after spending an hour to set the table saw blade exactly in the middle of the slot to be able to tilt the table without grinding the table with the blade  ;D

Paul, the plans specify solid bowsprit, but bird´s mouth seems actually easier than rounding a solid stick. If the wall thickness would be .3 or .4 I think the strength would practically the same, wouldn´t it? Even a solid sprit would need to be ripped and glued to prevent warping anyway.

The 5th paragraph on the Spar Plan (original set) in the text just below the main gaff says the sprit can be birdsmouth or a solid laminate of Douglas fir. 20% wall thickness will be fine with the whisker stays, 25% if just using the bob stay. The birdsmouth method will help when it comes to the octagonal portion.

If built hollow, good building technique is necessary, so you'll want a 3 to 6 mm drain hole in the bottom face of the sprit (facing the deck), just before the tennon plug at it's inboard end. This will let accumulated condensation drain out. Also a tapered hard point (swallowtail filler) at the stemhead band and again at the outboard end. The stemhead band hard point should be drilled to let condensation either move aft towards the drain or a drain should be provided just forward of the stemhead hard point.

This sounds more complicated then it actually is. During layout and assembly, you'll note the need for these things and then it'll fall into place.

If using the birdsmouth sprit, you'll surely want to use the symmetrical notch layout. It will save untold effort on the inboard end if you are making it to the plans. Also if the masts are symmetrical as well, the rounding process is much less painful.